ONE AT A TIME This probably sounds crazy, but just yesterday I was in Wal Mart looking for a wastebasket. I found some made in China for $6.99. I didn't want to pay that much so I asked the lady if they had any others. She took me to another department and they had some at $2.50 made in USA. They are just as good. Same as a kitchen rug I needed. I had to look, but I found some made in the USA and they were $3.00 cheaper. We are being brain washed that everything that comes from China and Mexico is cheaper. Not so. That is also why I don't buy cards at Hallmark anymore. They are made in China and are expensive. I buy them at Dollar Tree....50 cents each and made in USA. One Light Bulb at a Time A physics teacher in high school, once told the students that while one grasshopper on the railroad tracks wouldn't slow a train very much, a billion of them would. With that thought in mind, read the following, obviously written by a good American . . . Good idea . . .. one light bulb at a time . .. .. Check this out. I can verify this because I was in Lowe’s the other day for some reason and just for the heck of it I was looking at the hose attachments... They were all made in China . The next day I was in Ace Hardware and just for the heck of it I checked the hose attachments there. They were made in USA. Start looking . . ... In our current economic situation, every little thing we buy or do affects someone else - even their job. So, after reading this email, I think this lady is on the right track.. Let's get behind her! My grandson likes Hershey's candy. I noticed, though, that it is marked made in Mexico now. I do not buy it any more. My favorite toothpaste Colgate is made in Mexico... now I have switched to Crest. You have to read the labels on everything.... This past weekend I was at Kroger . . . I needed 60W light bulbs and Bounce dryer sheets. I was in the light bulb aisle, and right next to the GE brand I normally buy was an off-brand labeled, "Everyday Value." I picked up both types of bulbs and compared the stats they were the same except for the price . . .. The GE bulbs were more money than the Everyday Value brand but the thing that surprised me the most was the fact that GE was made in MEXICO and the Everyday Value brand was made in - get ready for this - the USA in a company in Cleveland , Ohio. So throw out the myth that you cannot find products you use every day that are made right here... So on to another aisle - Bounce Dryer Sheets... yep, you guessed it, Bounce cost more money and is made in Canada... The Everyday Value brand was less money and MADE IN THE USA! I did laundry yesterday and the dryer sheets performed just like the Bounce Free I have been using for years and at almost half the price! My challenge to you is to start reading the labels when you shop for everyday things and see what you can find that is made in the USA - the job you save may be your own or your neighbors! |
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
An awareness-raising email!
How to Live, Work, or Cope With a Control Freak — Self Help Daily
September 14, 2011
The following is a guest article by Mark Tyrrell from Hypnosis Downloads.com:
Five Steps for Dealing With a Manipulative Control Freak
by Mark Tyrrell
by Mark Tyrrell
Control freaks don’t tend to make people around them happy. Okay, this is an understatement. Being in the constant orbit of a control freak can make you downright miserable.
Colleagues, friends, and partners can feel their every thought, action, and opinion is only valid if it concurs totally with the control freak’s take on things. We all need to feel we control some things to help us feel secure and safe; but the constant judging, micromanaging, interfering, bossiness, and manipulation of a dictatorial control freak goes way beyond this.Feeling constantly judged, micromanaged, and manipulated eventually builds resentment, bitterness, and anxiety. The lack of tolerance or credit given for any initiative of our own makes us feel subjugated, like dejected subjects of some despotic ruler whose one role is to hear and obey. Remember that control freaks are “status junkies”. Anything they feel you say or do to undermine their own sense of inflated self won’t be tolerated, regardless of your thoughts and feelings.
And whether they intended to bully or not, the fallout is that people feel steamrollered and bullied.
So how can you best deal with a control freak?
Understand that yes, you are dealing with a control freak
No matter how intelligent, ingenious, and prone to being right your control freak is, despite all that or whether they are wonderfully helpful sometimes, you still have to deal with that controlling behavior, that tyrannical bit of them. Separate all the wonderful good they might be doing through their tremendous drive to get things done from the fact that you feel totally controlled by them.
We can make excuses for other people at the same time as they make us feel acutely bad. So right here and right now, whatever their “saving graces”, understand what you have to deal with by separating in your own mind the good stuff about them from this overbearing control.
Respect your own autonomy
We all need to feel a sense of independence and self-direction. Even if the control freak is your boss, don’t feel you have to automatically say yes to every little whim and demand.
A client of mine was amazed by the idea she could sometimes turn down her boss’s demand she do unpaid overtime after work. “Treat your boss’s unreasonable orders as if they were requests,” I suggested to her. Whenever he “ordered” her to work unpaid, she would tell him she’d get back to him about it after seeing whether it was possible. This started to alter “the game”. He began to appreciate she wasn’t a doormat.
Sometimes you have to force people into the situation of behaving decently rather than waiting until they “see the light”. If you don’t behave as if your own sense of autonomy is important, than neither will the dictator in your life.
Don’t always be “nice”
Control freaks don’t play by the rules of “niceness”. Helpfulness, a willingness to pull together and “not make waves”, is part of human nature. Many of us like to help if we can because we are “hard-wired” to. Human beings are social creatures and after all, we don’t want to hurt the control freak’s feelings.
But control freaks sometimes like to meet their match. They’ll respect people who have a will and mind of their own or even those who don’t overly care whether they are liked or respected by the CF. Control freaks are so hard to please that you might waste many lifetimes trying to please, placate, and pacify them only to inevitably fail. If someone is pathologically mean with their praise or consideration of your feelings and needs, then don’t treat them as if they are not like this.
Don’t argue; it won’t work
Don’t be too nice because control freaks don’t really work in the realms of “niceness” (as opposed to charm), but don’t get into long-winded arguments trying to justify your position, either. Control freaks are great at arguing why you and everyone else in the world should feel, think, do, and say just as they see fit. Just make your point once and keep coming back to it. If you don’t want to paint your bedroom wall the color they demand is best, then tell them so but don’t feel you have to justify your position. This “broken record technique” is hugely effective. Just state your position (“I want to paint my walls lime green!”) and repeat whatever they say. They’ll soon get bored.
Life’s too short
If you don’t have to have this person in your life, consider cutting them loose to go on their way dictating and steamrollering others. We risk becoming control freaks ourselves when we feel it’s our divine role to change them. We may help others to change by adjusting our own responses, but ultimately they are responsible for themselves.
Part of their journey to maturity needs to be a realization that other people are not just puppets to be bent to their will. This is how very small children may see the world, but a mature human being knows what they can and cannot influence and control.
Some control freaks really do want to change and they might need help. I am reminded of the cartoon in which a man tells his wife: “You know, my New Year’s resolution is to stop telling you what to do all the time and I’ve also written down what your New Year’s resolutions are going to be!”
Mark Tyrrell is a trainer, therapist and author and co-founder of Hypnosis Downloads.com where he has created downloads on How to deal with the control freak and other difficult people.
"The Control Freak and Their Vulnerability"
"Control freaks" or "perfectionists"[4] can be seen as defending themselves against inner vulnerabilities, as with the man who was "a dominating control freak because of his mistaken belief that if he wasn't in control, he would re-experience his childhood angst".[5] Such a figure will "cajole, wheedle, pressurise, get 'difficult' all the time, to get his own way. He's always behaving like a puppet-master, tying strings on other people … because he can't bear to be changed himself".[6] Similarly, a woman who 'is not grounded either in her own imagery or her own musculature … finds her identity in power over (sometimes called love of) her body, her family, her friends, her garden … Without that control, she is nobody'.[7]When such a control freak pattern is broken, 'the Controller is left with a terrible feeling of powerlessness … But feeling their pain and fear brings them back to themselves.[8]
Control freaks have been linked to codependents, in the sense that "codependency stems from a deep-rooted fear of abandonment, which leads to an excessive need to control and dominate … to control others because they fear they cannot control themselves".[9] Recovery entails recognising that being "a control freak … kept me in codependency, and pushed people away from me. To grow out of controlling, we learn to be, instead of do".[10]
In terms of personality-type theory, "the Control Freak … is very much a Type A … driven [by a] need to be in control".[11
~Wikipedia~
Three Things I Learned WHile My PLane Crashed: Ric Elias/compliments of TED
http://www.ted.com Ric Elias had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. What went through his mind as the doomed plane went down? At TED, he tells his story publicly for the first time.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Witness to a Cover-Up
Col. Kwiatkowski saw no aircraft debris at the Pentagon
I watched a CBC program called “102 Minutes that Changed the World” Sunday night, chronicling events from the first crash into the WTC on 9/11 until the fall of the second tower. I was stunned, unable to move, unable to think.
That was it for me. The only thing I could do was go to bed. And so I changed the channel, surfing to find a show to help me forget what I’d seen and fall asleep. I landed on the Turner Classic Movie channel.
There a “9/11 first responder” by the name of “Vernon Webb” was about to give his 9/11 selection of a movie. First Responder chooses 9/11 fare.
I couldn’t believe what I heard............
CLICK HERE TO READ THIS IMPORTANT ARTICLE.......
The Whistleblowers’ How-To Guide
Frederic Whitehurst and other famous U.S. whistleblowers are donating a book their lawyer wrote on how to do it right to libraries across the country. By John Solomon
Frederic Whitehurst had no idea what being a whistleblower entailed. He simply became outraged when he witnessed a colleague in the FBI laboratory giving misleading testimony in a criminal case two decades ago. So the supervisory agent decided to speak up, telling the defense experts about the inaccuracies.
It cost him nearly a decade of his career, almost all his life savings, severally emotionally draining internal investigations, the humiliation of a psychiatric exam, and an epic legal fight with the bureau. But the proudly stubborn Vietnam veteran persevered and ultimately prevailed in forcing sweeping ethical and scientific reforms at the vaunted FBI crime lab that began in the 1990s and still reverberate today.....
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING.......
Sunday, September 11, 2011
The criminalization of speech since 9/11
Last week, a 24-year-old Virginia man named Jubair Ahmad was arrested and charged with providing "material support" to an officially designated terrorist organization, the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
But Ahmad is not accused of sending money or weapons to LeT, or scouting out targets for the group. What had Ahmad allegedly done? Uploaded a "propaganda video to YouTube on behalf of LeT" that showed "so-called jihadi martyrs and armored trucks exploding after having been hit by improvised explosive devices," according to the Justice Department. Ahmad allegedly had spoken to the son of an LeT figure about making the video.
The case is an example of prosecutors' aggressive use, in the decade after Sept. 11, of the preexisting law that bars providing "material support" to officially designated terrorist groups. In a landmark case last year, the Supreme Court endorsed the......
....to continue reading, click here......
They said he had weeks to live
My son Joshua was born too soon. But in the years that followed, he struggled to hold on. So did we.
BY DEBBI HARRIS
.... CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE.......
Why we can never escape our siblings
New science sheds light on how birth order and brother-sister relationships shape our lives. An expert explains
Zurijeta via Shutterstock
Sometimes a family tragedy can expose bonds you didn't know existed. That's what happened with my younger sister and me...........
Click here to read article..........
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
10 Revolting TV Shows That Need to Die
Seriously? Is this the first list the Kardashian Krazees didn't make?!?!?!?
CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE......
CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE......
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
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"there were no words, but images flooded every cell in her being ...4 and a half decades!"
